Episode #144 – Jeff Jones, Oaksterdam University

Episode #144 – Jeff Jones, Oaksterdam University

Jeff Jones of Oaksterdam University discusses how his fathers passing led him to a life of activism. Jeff discusses how he found the medical utility in cannabis and didn’t want another person to go through what his dad went through. He talks about his initial dispensary in Oakland and how that led him to the US Supreme Court. His loss in the high court was the industry’s gain in the long run and Jeff explains that he knew that the loss was a win in real time. For more Jones conversation check out Ep. 113 which features Jeff’s wife Dale Sky Jones. But first, we’ve got a mini-interview with David Brown of Lift who’s running the Lift Expo where Seth will be moderating a panel.

Transcript:

peaker 1: And now for something completely different, just before we get to Jeff Jones had the opportunity to talk to David Brown of Lift who is invited me to the lift expo to moderate a panel. So as I'll be up there in a few weeks thought maybe you would like to know what's going on. Maybe you buy a ticket. Come along. Okay. So David Brown

Speaker 2: from Lyft, Canada. David, thanks for giving us a few minutes. How are you?

Speaker 3: Good. Good stuff. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2: Of course there. There's good reason to do so. Um, you have invited me to moderate a panel at Lyft Expo, May 28th and 29th. So thanks for the invite. Wanted to make sure to get the word out. Is there still a few weeks to get involved? But uh, what, what are the basics? What do folks need to know? Well, the panel

Speaker 3: be moderating is going to be on the, on the subject of the roots of cannabis access in Canada. And we'll be speaking with a couple people who've been working in the Canadian cannabis industry for a very long time. Now I will be talking about some of the dispensary's and organizations that have helped bring us to this point. You know, Canada's getting ready to start the discussion about legalizing recreational marijuana. A medical cannabis has been legal in Canada for many years now. Uh, and so there's, you know, a long, uh, a long history to talk about as we emerge into this. You know, this new conversation about recreational.

Speaker 4: Yeah,

Speaker 2: yeah. Hillary, uh, you know, coming from BCC CS, a British Columbia Compassion Club society, that's obviously one of the more storied, one of the most storied. Uh, I'm in Canada and her current work at Badger can. I mean, you know, I, I know and Love Hillary. It's a great choice for, for a panelist and you can't go wrong with, with at least her, right?

Speaker 3: Yeah, I think, I think it will be a great conversation. She, Hillary has moderated our forums in the past for us, uh, and she will be able to speak to that entire Qa, that entire history coming from a place of activism and push and pushing the boundaries of legal access to know working inside this emerging industry. To ensure that patients still are represented as part of that conversation and uh, and we will also have a dealer and Mcpherson who is the incoming president of the Canadian Association of Medical Cannabis dispensaries and he'll be able to talk about everything that's going on right now, especially in Vancouver and Victoria in terms of their attempt to regulate dispensary's as well.

Speaker 2: Excellent. As far as the two days, you know, how, how much content is there, how many sessions do you have and all that

Speaker 3: we have. We have dozens of speakers lined up. We have people from analytical testing labs, we have representatives from licensed producers. We have people who are growing under the, the older, uh, mm ar system, uh, which was sort of a home production system that emerged into a supplying a lot of dispensaries. We have, you know, everyone representing just about every aspect of the industry will. We'll be speaking. It's going to be exciting.

Speaker 2: Excellent. Fantastic. What else is going on besides the speakers? Uh, I would imagine there is a s a fair amount of an expo if it's called the, uh, lift cannabis expo, right?

Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely. We have over 100 exhibitors, again, from all aspects of the industry. We will have a vape lounge. Uh, we will have a demo area where people will be showing off some recipes as well as some extraction methods. Uh, and uh, we will have a few a surprise events that will be disclosed at the event.

Speaker 2: What are you most excited about? I guess a without sharing one of the surprise events?

Speaker 3: Well, I think, uh, bringing this many people together, not only from across Canada but North America, I think that people have their eyes on Canada right now and it's a great opportunity for, for everyone to learn more about what's happening and the conversations that will be coming out of that is, is certainly what excites me.

peaker 1: And now for something completely different, just before we get to Jeff Jones had the opportunity to talk to David Brown of Lift who is invited me to the lift expo to moderate a panel. So as I'll be up there in a few weeks thought maybe you would like to know what's going on. Maybe you buy a ticket. Come along. Okay. So David Brown

Speaker 2: from Lyft, Canada. David, thanks for giving us a few minutes. How are you?

Speaker 3: Good. Good stuff. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2: Of course there. There's good reason to do so. Um, you have invited me to moderate a panel at Lyft Expo, May 28th and 29th. So thanks for the invite. Wanted to make sure to get the word out. Is there still a few weeks to get involved? But uh, what, what are the basics? What do folks need to know? Well, the panel

Speaker 3: be moderating is going to be on the, on the subject of the roots of cannabis access in Canada. And we'll be speaking with a couple people who've been working in the Canadian cannabis industry for a very long time. Now I will be talking about some of the dispensary's and organizations that have helped bring us to this point. You know, Canada's getting ready to start the discussion about legalizing recreational marijuana. A medical cannabis has been legal in Canada for many years now. Uh, and so there's, you know, a long, uh, a long history to talk about as we emerge into this. You know, this new conversation about recreational.

Speaker 4: Yeah,

Speaker 2: yeah. Hillary, uh, you know, coming from BCC CS, a British Columbia Compassion Club society, that's obviously one of the more storied, one of the most storied. Uh, I'm in Canada and her current work at Badger can. I mean, you know, I, I know and Love Hillary. It's a great choice for, for a panelist and you can't go wrong with, with at least her, right?

Speaker 3: Yeah, I think, I think it will be a great conversation. She, Hillary has moderated our forums in the past for us, uh, and she will be able to speak to that entire Qa, that entire history coming from a place of activism and push and pushing the boundaries of legal access to know working inside this emerging industry. To ensure that patients still are represented as part of that conversation and uh, and we will also have a dealer and Mcpherson who is the incoming president of the Canadian Association of Medical Cannabis dispensaries and he'll be able to talk about everything that's going on right now, especially in Vancouver and Victoria in terms of their attempt to regulate dispensary's as well.

Speaker 2: Excellent. As far as the two days, you know, how, how much content is there, how many sessions do you have and all that

Speaker 3: we have. We have dozens of speakers lined up. We have people from analytical testing labs, we have representatives from licensed producers. We have people who are growing under the, the older, uh, mm ar system, uh, which was sort of a home production system that emerged into a supplying a lot of dispensaries. We have, you know, everyone representing just about every aspect of the industry will. We'll be speaking. It's going to be exciting.

Speaker 2: Excellent. Fantastic. What else is going on besides the speakers? Uh, I would imagine there is a s a fair amount of an expo if it's called the, uh, lift cannabis expo, right?

Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely. We have over 100 exhibitors, again, from all aspects of the industry. We will have a vape lounge. Uh, we will have a demo area where people will be showing off some recipes as well as some extraction methods. Uh, and uh, we will have a few a surprise events that will be disclosed at the event.

Speaker 2: What are you most excited about? I guess a without sharing one of the surprise events?

Speaker 3: Well, I think, uh, bringing this many people together, not only from across Canada but North America, I think that people have their eyes on Canada right now and it's a great opportunity for, for everyone to learn more about what's happening and the conversations that will be coming out of that is, is certainly what excites me.

Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, you know, federal adult use by the summer of 2017. I feel like you guys are really leading the way right

Speaker 3: there is, you know, there's a template here of legal, medical cannabis at a federal level, which is really, uh, you know, I think shaping, uh, will help shape the direction that the recreational system takes and it's going to be complicated. But it's, it's a very exciting time.

Speaker 2: Exactly. And Badger can hillary, you know, from Badger, badger can being one of those licensed producers. So the framework is set. There's still a lot to be done obviously. Um, but I'm excited to get up there and really kind of reengage. It's been a little bit since, uh, since I was there in Vancouver a while back, but I'm looking forward to the expo a where can folks get tickets?

Speaker 3: Folks can go to Lyft Expo.ca. Tickets are only $15 for the entire weekend and I encourage everyone to come on up to Toronto. Excellent.

Speaker 2: Perfect. David, I'm looking forward to seeing you and looking forward to moderating the panel and, uh, enjoying the festivities, including the surprise engagements, whatever they turn out to be.

Speaker 3: We're excited to have you seth, and thanks for having me on the show. You got it.

Speaker 2: Jeff Jones,

Speaker 1: Jeff Jones, the Volkster Dammam University discusses how his father's passing led him to a life of activism. Welcome to cannabis economy. I'm your host Seth Adler. Check us out on twitter, facebook, instagram, and youtube channel with the handle can economy. That's two ends of the word economy. It's got the new cannabis kind of the APP in itunes. You can get us through the itunes podcast app in Google play where you could get every episode, including 1:13, which features Jeff's wife Dale Sky Jones. Jeff discusses how he found the medical utility in cannabis and didn't want another person to go through what his dad went through. He talks about his initial dispensary in Oakland and how that led him to the US Supreme Court. His loss in the high court was the industry's gain in the long run and Jeff explained that he knew that the loss was a winter in real time.

Speaker 5: Appreciate it. It's a pleasure to be here. All right. Now we've spoken with Dale Sky Jones, right, and now we're speaking with Jeff Jones. The key difference of course, would be the US Supreme Court, among other things. That was in my early days in my twenties when I want it to be a little bit more on the reckless side as some would say. My family was very worried about me when I moved out to California because I got engaged with the reform group around cannabis policy changing that it. They teased me and said I joined a cult. Okay. And nowadays it's one of the more in things to do. It's very hip to be engaged in cannabis policy reform or in the commerce around the emerging industry. That was back in those days just to movement and a very splintered, small grassroots level movement. So let's talk about how did you get into this whole thing?

Speaker 5: Where are you from? I'm from rapid city, South Dakota originally and I have been to rapid city, South Dakota. That is one of the most beautiful places on earth. I liked it. We were back there in August with my family for a brief time citing, uh, what, how did you leave rapid city, South Dakota and why? Well, there's a long story. The short story, the short story is that my father contracted cancer when I was a kid and through years of testing had found that it went malignant and spread into his lungs and his lymph nodes. So he went into dual radiation treatment in the fall of 87 and passed away in [inaudible] 88, sorry, spring and him passing away that year was very much a home issue. He died in hospice. It was right in front of me. There was no way to ignore somebody that had a 200 pound frame going to less than 100 pounds through wasting.

Speaker 5: And later that year there was a big ruling out of the dea with the administrative ruling of Francis Young. And that ruling, uh, had a statement in it that stuck with me when I saw it and headline news of that. It was arbitrary and capricious that the federal government through the dea and other policy means would stand in the way of patients that have cancer, HIV. And when they said cancer and HIV, I want what? What do you mean? And I started digging and when I went and read the patient stories that were testified before this tea and the, what the council's on both sides said, I said, somebody's not being truthful here. And it took four years to literally do that because there wasn't real clean access to the Internet back then. I didn't have access in the simple ways that my library pulling up that stuff.

Speaker 5: When you'd go to the Public Library and South Dakota and you would find two or three books about marijuana and if they weren't so good they weren't like a gardening book or like this. Maybe it's something we don't understand. It was, yeah, this is all bad and go to hell using it. Right. Reefer madness type. So it took a little while. It took me getting into. And as soon as I got into college, which was where I first went to the South Dakota School of Mines and technology and rapid and then transferred into vermilion, South Dakota. And when I got there I got some tech buddies. They put me in touch with the web in a way that I had not been engaged in through the alt forums. And when I started digging through some of the troves of information that was there because I had nineties, I hadn't. Yeah, it was in 93 [inaudible] I moved out here in the early part of [inaudible] 94.

Speaker 5: I had an Aha moment and I went, I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to be part of the system that perpetuates this lie that, that this is a dangerous substance, and I knew right away that this has been this label, that it's been misdiagnosed as a symptom of a problem that is related to drug abuse and that there is a medical utility around it. And having affected me with my dad passing away, it made me go. I don't want us to have another person have to deal with that. Another young individual that has a parent or a relative that passes away with a condition that gives you little to no hope. The diagnosis is quick, the death is quick at best. They're not in a lot of pain for very long. Right? Uh, it was horrifying to think that that was continuing to go on and the government's line was, oh, we'll have hope.

Speaker 5: We'll figure this out of what. And so, I mean, in the last 20 years, not much has changed. I mean we pass to the prop 2:15 and 96 here and we're still trying to implement it and I feel like in a positively, and I don't want to say no change as much as that, it's been stagnant, it's been slow driving force of us not giving up an inch, but the other side never really wanting to work with us in a way that's meaningful. And it's the same stigmatization that I have with the current presidential debate because I feel like there's one person in all of those that are this candidates that literally talks, remain sorta like Barbara Lee, our or our current congressperson from this area, right? That didn't vote for the war. Didn't vote for a lot of the stuff that went down after nine slash 11 and not the, not the Patriot Act, but was kind of shunned because she was so liberal. Uh, and the same can be said with Bernie, you know, and the fact that, you know, the, the wife of the president, Bill Clinton, who sued me is now running. And I don't feel what she said about her issue is close to enough.

Speaker 6: So, um, I appreciate the fact that you just brought that up because a, it is literally personal with you. Right? So can we. Let's talk about that. Okay. Let's talk about exactly what happened and you know, go into as much detail as you'd like.

Speaker 5: Um, well I, I think that the starting factor is what, what transpired out of my father passing away. It was me getting engaged with researching, trying to change the policy, writing out to California and engaging in advocacy group around legalization discussion debates, forums and tabling events, which then led me to meeting Dennis Peron at the cannabis club, Brownie, Mary, a few of the other advocates that had been dispensing medical cannabis to patients that using it. And I said, well, I can do that. And I said, well, I don't. I do it where I live in Oakland, California. And at the time I had been living in Berkeley and was trying to organize around Berkeley politics. And I found that it's very difficult in a city that's super political and everybody's got their own soapbox to get anything done because everybody's got their own issue and nobody's required to help move it.

Speaker 5: I moved into Oakland's political scene when and was welcomed, uh, the pastor resolution, endorsing what at the time I was running a delivery service, helping patients through bike messenger to begin with. And then we went to cart delivery in the summer of 95 and we moved onto this street in July of [inaudible] 96. So we opened up a storefront with support of our city government before it was legal in the state of California, similar to what Dennis was doing in San Francisco. And at that point when I opened up the facility on Broadway, I knew I was going to likely get in trouble. I knew that me signing a lease, me opening up a bank account potentially in the midst of all this to to run this business was going to come back to bite me. And so we started organizing around legal defense. I got a general counsel, Robert Raich that then turned into one of the legal counsels that help to fight the federal case that was filed against me and we started trying to maneuver ourselves politically a little bit and we might have charged up the road a little bit fast.

Speaker 5: Uh, the day that I sent out my first press release, I got sued by the Department of Justice. Literally that day, that same day, I sent out a press release at 7:30 in the morning attacking then our attorney general Dan lungren for not wanting to fight real crime in Oakland and going out and fighting the drug dealers in east Oakland, a quoted by one of our council members. Uh, by that noon, I had the department of Justice's Marshall's in my office handing me a service notice saying that I was served and it was a restaurant. They didn't want to file that day. But I rushed there hand. I, I really feel that I triggered what was an ongoing case that was likely going to be filed against six to seven clubs. I triggered it that day because they're way to respond to that also was to say not in our town. Right.

Speaker 5: And so we kind of went back and forth jousting both in the PR and in the court system for some time after they filed the case in January of [inaudible] 98. We had a press conference at my office in March, which then they sent it to undercover dea agents to try to say I'm still selling because at the time I was open under a a notice to say that I was sued federally running a drug house, but there had not been a shutdown notice on the injunction. So the judge said, yeah, I think you should be enjoined. We're going to grant this preliminary injunction. We're going to go and look at this, but doesn't look good for you, you know? And so they send in these agents to watch what was happening. And we exposed to wonderful. Okay. And caught him in the elevator and had the press come over and pinned him into the elevator and start filming this undercover agent holding hands over his face to not tell people who he was and we didn't get any validity that it was dea, but he sure didn't answer any questions.

Speaker 5: Right. And it was later exposed that he was. And so back and forth, we were fighting a line in the sand of being both safe to the people that we were trying to help, but also regulated enough by the city and having enough security to identify threats and problems that were coming in the door. No different than you see in the clubs today. Sure. You know, and we were kind of that precursor of what it was going to take to try to sell a scheduled substance within an office that didn't have the right away on a legal footing to do it under the federal law. Uh, and I think that was what was scary to too. I remember Debbie, one of my early mentors, cornering the Department of Justice lawyer when he was thin suing in the rage case. Why they were following this line of logic and he said, well, it's a slippery slope.

Speaker 5: You allow this medical marijuana argument to exist and all drugs fit in and what are we going to stop? How can I stop it? And I can see for a moment has pointed view, but it was very uncalculated in the sense that there's a lot of suffering going on in between and isn't there a better way forward? And that's kind of what I've always been fighting for is if it can happen, let's do it. Right. And so I took what I saw happening with Dennis Brown. He married in San Francisco in a very organized political, uh, lgbt backed arena that that's how it happened under the HIV movement. And I spread it out to anything and I, I can tell you that it pained me back then to deal with some of the parents bringing in the kids that you now know about. But I wouldn't talk about back then that I was helping because I thought I was going to go to prison.

Speaker 5: Right? So I helped kids as young as two years old with epileptic conditions. Get access to cannabis as far back as 95 knowing that it worked because you could see it right in front of you, what you've seen in the subject group to specials and the many other seizures stopped. It's obvious the patient's feeling better and you could see them smile. They became coherent where they were not controlling themselves before because their eyes roll back into their head. I had a friend that was epileptic and it's not fun when they have a grand mal seizure in front of you because they lose function and it's not fun for anybody and to not be able to talk about it. Back then because of the fear of a. It was definitely a a devastating move in my own logic of like, well, I'm taking enough risks because I got into this naively thinking set that there was this person, this body, this group of individuals, government off ia that was holding this back.

Speaker 5: Because if you look logically common sense about whether or not this is a dangerous substance, whether or not it has a way of harming people. Every time you come back with an answer that does not meet the current position that it's in, so what how did it get put into that and I just kept looking at it logically going, there's got to be a fix here, or there's a person that's standing in the way and I was very naive because it's not one thing. It's many things that have been layered over time that have kept it from being solved, were rolled into a position that is, as you would say, more righteous that's more forthcoming about it not being such a dangerous commodity. It has to be bad, but being regulated in a way that treats it as an adult commodity.

Speaker 5: So let's go back to the elevator and here's this dea agent. We think covering his face and you're working through the court systems. I, I want to make sure that we get into the courtroom and you know what I mean, because I'll tell you this. At that point, I knew that this was a serious case. When I'm standing there face to face with the dea agent and I'm holding the elevator door and not letting him go, my attorney at the time grabs my arm and says, Jeff, oh, the elevator, and I looked at him and I said, you're crazy, and I'm screaming at the top of my lungs yelling things at this guy that I would not yell at anybody about how he's ruined people's lives. Now he's here to shut us down and how he's a thug and he's coming in here with a badge to say what we're doing is wrong.

Speaker 5: When he doesn't have a solution for these people. I'm helping turning it back to them and all of them are starting to get engaged. That came to my press conference going, what's going on here? Because this is all happening in the midst of us holding a press conference about me doing a medical necessity. Access Post are injunction being granted, so I'm telling the public, I'm dispensing firsthand with the press in hand right there. I did an over the counter with the press tape running and they're sending an agents to view that to say, I'm in violation with the court order to shut me down, so I'm living and I'm looking at this attorney going, you don't have the right to do this, and he's like, you're going to be under arrest here in a second if you don't let this officer go because you now have him in your custody.

Speaker 5: You have now taken him as a kidnapping product and they can come in with guns and if you get shot, I can't stop that. And I immediately took a step backwards. The elevator started to move and then went away and my attorney had actually gotten into the elevator and make sure the guy got out of there. At the time, we did not know that right next to this one agent that was in the corner cowering with his hands over his face with another agent. There was also playing close. It was right next to them that as soon as he noticed his buddy got taken immediately, came to the elevator and recite again, and we have photos of him moving in, midway through us, holding him in custody and after that all happened, I knew this was super serious. I mean I didn't understand it before.

Speaker 5: How serious align I was taking. I got it. Then my attorney, more or less that I could have been shot for what I did, it sounds like and and how I said that, well, how I interact or to this agent, I now know that I could have been arrested that day and they didn't. They refuse to arrest me because they did not want to put a line of sight on this fiasco that they created. They didn't have acknowledged it. That had happened. They simply said, we didn't have a field office activity. Nevermind because I. I grabbed him when we identified him through a falsified card that he had been granted with a note that he had gotten from a doctor that was practicing in California, legal what was currently living in Chicago. And they duped her address on the note without talking to her because we called, contacted, we're going to use it in our federal case if we could.

Speaker 5: Sure. And she says they're the recommendations coming from. And she said, no, I didn't authorize this. They never contacted me. They just do it and said. And they ran an office to verify it, to say no to the doctor's office event validated everything. And so it was a total falsified facade that they used and it trapped me. Um, when we vetted it out and figured him out and actually caught him that day, we were so surprised because I had to standing $100 finders fee with my security. If they found that card connected to a person, they were going to get $100 that day and their pocket. Right. Because this was a sought after individual at, at a false card. Right. And so I saw him on the couch in our waiting room as they walked in, walked up to him and said, can you come with me?

Speaker 5: And he stood up, looked at me and he knew who I was, I could tell right away, you know, and I didn't know him, but I was pretty sure that I wanted him to in this room and I said, you're going to let's go in this room. And he's like, well, would it be. And I'm like, we're going to go in this room over here. And at the time I was saying, we're going to go in this room over here. I started to press on his back with my flat hand, very hard, like almost like a football player would push somebody forward. So we're going in this room to explain to these people while you're here to shut me down. And he did a football roll off me and that's how we got into the elevator and how I trailed in there and stopped it because I was right with him to the elevator screaming at him at that point because I'd lost it.

Speaker 5: As soon as I started to push him. I don't remember pushing it. But now that I've played back years later, I remember doing it because I was mad and I at the point he started to stop, like, you're not getting me into a room. I know you're doing a press conference here because I've been briefed, I'm not going. And he didn't say that, but I could tell it was what was going on and I want. We were 10 feet away from the door and I wanted him in that room so the press could turn to it and see me standing next to a federal agent and then get the story from image wise here. And that's when he did his. I'm getting out of dodge. So, uh, what you are

Speaker 6: just demonstrated and demonstrated then was a, a

Speaker 5: shocking, um,

Speaker 6: about, of a intestinal fortitude.

Speaker 5: As I said, everybody that got involved with this in the bay in the early days had a personal story that affected them in their way that they were willing to go to fight or a war over this because you're thinking about your dad when your hands on. It has been that everybody that I'm working with because I surrounded myself with a bunch of sick people. My secretary was a cancer patient that died while she was a board member. My receptionist was an HIV survivor that died in Oakland. Uh, for my board members were terminal. I surrounded myself with people that needed this medicine because we were running ourselves back then as a cooperative, partly to spread out my risk because I knew I was gonna get in trouble and I was not being quiet. I felt being quiet about this is not going to get this law changed.

Speaker 5: That's why we've been stuck where we bet. And when I met Richard in [inaudible] 95, I moved him out here in [inaudible] 97 from Texas because I didn't want to go to prison at another fork because he was sending me stuff through the mail at that point, as a grower in Texas to here for my collective. And I said, I can't do that. So we got them into this area and he kept wanting me to go farther and pushing the all the way up until the point he did prop my team and then he stopped pushing because they pushed back so hard that he couldn't push anymore and he felt that we needed to keep pushing to get the change to finally occur. And we never felt that this was gonna be something that we did for our name as much as for the policy shift. So you know, you have to look at his saga and go.

Speaker 5: He was partly successful just because what he pushed was Colorado changing Washington changing, which then has led the rip tide of discussion that we knew was there. We felt that it was there, but we couldn't get it done until we had a win and that just wouldn't let us have us in 2010 here. And the prop 19 a success through failure is, is now recognized as that it's not recognized as failure, it's success through failure. Well, we organize the contingent that really was replicated in, in Colorado and slightly and in Washington state to trigger change unions, disenfranchised civil rights groups, uh, the industry itself that had come to play a bigger role in kind of the grassroots changing. And I think that's a big part issue even with the adult use major that's on the ballot here, is that you're bringing together desperate groups that don't have the same model of what their end goal is. And the only thing that they really share is that people shouldn't go to prison for cannabis. And that I think we have to kind of coalesce around as we see the ever changing landscape ahead.

Speaker 5: So we still didn't talk about the supreme court well, it. And getting back to the court case, I, I kind of took my, my court appearances, we had about four of them and the district court as therapy, a federal mandated therapy. I had to go in there and listen to these hacks, tell me how bad I was and how I should do better in society. Expects better out of me. Oh, you're a scumbag basically. And then I would leave that room and go back to exactly what I was doing. And even later in the court case, after I got shut down in November of [inaudible] 98, uh, actually October because I opened my office backup in November, but I wasn't able to dispense post November of [inaudible] 98. Uh, I still was organizing around people dispensing. So I ran a cart service that then send you down the street to find a dealer that I would pick or a storefront that was open that would take a risk, still facilitate.

Speaker 5: And uh, they were all right with that. And I carved that out with a federal court order through judge Bryer back in the nineties to say, no, no, I can go and do this. And then fighting back and forth again in court. We went to the ninth circuit, the Ninth Circuit concurred with my idea of a medical necessity defense granting us in September of [inaudible] 99, a defensible position to amend our junction that was remanded back to judge briars courtroom in District Court. We got that looked at in, what was it, 2000 2001. So in 2000 I had a month that I was actually federally legal to dispense marijuana under the controlled substance act because of a court order. So had an amended injunction at set for medical necessity purposes. If the person's going to be harmed by you not helping them, right, you can go and help them.

Speaker 5: So there's a very narrow interpretation that was still a piece of paper that was stayed by the US Supreme Court and their acceptance of the Supreme Court ruling that later came in in a one. Um, I'm sure I have someplace that's available. It's, it's just, uh, the, the, the amended injunction changed just one paragraph within the injunction that said I could do so under exempt purposes for necessity. That was immediately vacated as soon as the supreme court accepted a stay. Right. And then sort of the larger question about necessity and then that was overturned. So they overturned the ninth circuit decision in, uh, Gosh, was it march or May of 2001? I think it was may. I think both of our cases came. No, maybe it was June. Yeah, I think I came down late later than the rage case. Okay. So just to kind of, uh, talk about what the Supreme Court was talking about at the time.

Speaker 5: Bush v Gore obviously was in 2000. So you know, here comes Jeff Jones a couple months later, 2001 set the scene for us. Well, there are no cameras first because it's federal, there's no cameras and at best you get somebody that draws a what the scenery is behind you being the defendant in the case. I felt very set out because I was not involved with my legal team. I had to sit with the audience, they only allow one or two people from your legal team to sit at the bench and you're treated as a commenter to go into the supreme court. Even if you're the case at hand, uh, you get a couple of passes to bring your family are connected. People involved in the case. But that's about it. It's very formal and cold as I remember feeling when I went in there myself physically and emotionally. Yeah.

Speaker 5: And one of the court justices had to recuse himself from reviewing the case and its ruling on it. And that was Steven Briar outright because his younger brother is Charles Prior, which was my district court judge through all of our district court case stays in the nineties. There you go. And so that was rather interesting and all in itself, uh, we had the benefit of having a local high school pull our case in as a mock case day involving a, a well to do case that was trivial to the time in the sense of what was going on with these kids. And it happened to be in Langley, Virginia, which is backdrop, CIA, right? So all the spook kids were there. And so I went in foggy bottom the week of my supreme court hearing for the case to go forward and to have the oral arguments made for a moot court with these particular kids.

Speaker 5: And they stood up and ruled both sides. And surprisingly enough, they ruled the same way that the high court ruled a eight zero against us. And it was to do with we don't get to pick and choose a medicine that you can trivially put in place under necessity. And that the common law doctrine, while it might save somebody's being broken out of a jail because the jail is on fire, it doesn't allow you wholesale pharmacy status exemption. And that's kind of what we were trying to do. Right? You were trying to reschedule in some sense, we were saying it in a, in a, in a necessity effort of somebody having a life on the line to have access to this medicine. And it wasn't used for chronic pain. It wasn't used for, uh, an ailment that wouldn't cause you death. Yes, you have a necessity.

Speaker 5: So we scaled back the approach or prompt to 15 to really narrow it to people that were on their deathbed and that didn't work in the nineties, but during the whole time, do you know what our case was about? And we took it upon our shoulders. It was education. We educated the court, we educated the media, we educated the pundents, we educated the population and we came back and harvest of those seeds. Success definitely because we knew we were not going to win as soon as I had the ninth circuit ruling in hand and looked at the detail of the conclusion of what the case was about and asked my attorney. So what's the precedent they used? What are the cases are like it? And he said, well, there isn't one jeff, this is yours. And I'm like, so we're standing on a pedestal by ourselves ready to get knocked off by the Supreme Court.

Speaker 5: And he's like, well, I wouldn't put it that way. And I'm like, well, I am because that's what's going to happen. And he wouldn't agree with me and I'm like, that's all right, we're going to go down this line, we're going to fight this case hard, but we're going to lose this, right? Because we don't have any basis for this and they're not going to let us go. They're not going to let the particular go based on an argument that doesn't exist in in court because that's a hard slippery slope. And I and I, and I didn't know the argument that the Department of Justice lawyer was in his mind using, but I got it and all that clinked together. When I heard that out of his mouth, I'm like, oh, I understand all that. Because it was. I couldn't see it being used in, in protection of other people.

Speaker 5: Now I felt it needed to be victory for me because it was affecting me, but he couldn't be in a mirror for other people that were like me. And that's the problem I had is I didn't see it being real at the time. And now I see things being real. The government isn't getting its way. At every turn we have the dea questioning whether or not we even get to keep the classification at hand. We couldn't get them to talk to us in the nineties. They wouldn't respond to our petition in a way that was meaningful because that would have given in light of air. Uh, they can't deny that it has air now. So you just referenced the Dea a news from Kinda last week. Uh, we're here in April of 2016 and they're considering potentially, maybe we should breathe or dea scheduled. I don't think they said d sketch, but you know what it's linked to, to five-year-old petition that was filed by the two governors at the time of Rhode Island and New Jersey saying we estates want to reschedule marijuana because our state population thinks that it doesn't need to be a schedule one.

Speaker 5: And it's the state executives that filed that argument and they filed it five years ago and we're just now getting to the conclusions and maybe we should think about releasing the report. The DEA has at all the information that's needed since September of last year. Right. They're just, they're just laying the obvious and the bigger question should be asked, why are they delaying it? The, the, the, the part I keep making folks focuses. Is this plutonium? Are we dealing with something that's as dangerous maternity because we're treating it that way. We go back in history and look at this, this time we're going to go there. It must have been something wacky about that plant because we treated it like it was plutonium. I mean even in the states that it's legal. You can't recycle this stuff into compost and Colorado. You got to destroy it. Right? Why?

Speaker 5: Because we're treating it like that to me is the bigger question that we got to keep asking because the dea has got away with creating that facade and if we can retool that, it's our future. It's what we get to look at it differently. That's why politically I can't not support a change in our current electoral system with the presidency and going outside of the stock choice answer that most people would want, you know, the one that's supposed to be in line to get the presidency. Yeah. So just in it, instead of going there, where I want to go with you is we have an eight, a justice court, uh, once again, uh, for different reasons and this, for everyone I cannot tell you after hearing what happened with that and how quickly we have a change of the balance of power on the High Court and how happy I am not necessarily happy Scalia passed, but his time was here.

Speaker 5: Right. And when he commented in my case orally when we went to oral arguments and said that, you know, there's choice, you take the grim reaper, you take this drug, Huh? And he made it so trivial, like it was just like a fork in the road and then he ruled against us and I think heavily lobbied for this to never go free. It made me forever mad at him. Right. In a way that I would never forgive him for it because it just, it was not fair for him to make that kind of decision on somebody's choice and hope about feeling better. Well, I, I, I'll take it one step further. It sounds a flip. It not, not necessarily unfair, it sounds like he wasn't taking life seriously. Well, India, and I think that he felt that this substance could never help somebody and I think that's where the dea perpetuated such a fraud that they owe us.

Speaker 5: They owe us something. They always more than an. I'm sorry, they owe us more than just being truthful. Uh, they owe folks like Sanja Gupta, accurate information. They owe us retooling what they're actually saying about the substance instead of the fraud that they've been trying to commit on the American public. And I think if we can get to that place on, I'm rather happy because all I've wanted is accurate information. I'm not trying to hide cannabis is the wonder drug that doesn't cause problems. It has issued its drawbacks, but they far outweighed by prohibition in the current system and that we see with the electoral states that have changed the map for us and have given us a petri dish to kind of look into and go. There can be success over the fence. It is amazing to be post prop 19 and actually have victory at hand in states that have proven out what our logic was back then that you can make revenue off it for the state and nobody's going to prison.

Speaker 5: That you can down scale some of the threats of the use and abuse in our society and you can set up engaging educational campaigns that get people to think exactly. Because if you've heard my wife talk in the science class at Oaksterdam, she harps on tobacco and that we've done more in cessation and stopping adolescent use or abuse of tobacco products in the last 20 years through education. Then we have through jails. Why don't we replicate, why wouldn't we replicate it? Yeah. It would be common sense. So, uh, I'm getting the sense that you don't think that common sense is really used. No, it's not. And I think in the legal logic of things, the supreme court changing its footing is rather helpful, but I'm don't like the current pick. Um, I, I believe that Bernie Sanders has it right. The pitch should be pulled as soon as somebody wins the election.

Speaker 5: If they want, because he's not the choice I would want because that particular pick ruled in the district court in DC against the Americans for safe access petition that said we have enough information to change the schedule, and he said, no, we have to listen to science and his logic of how he was explaining that we're not listening to science, and I went a circular argument. I'm not all right with this guy getting into the Supreme Court for the next 20 years, 15 years before he gets in, which it seems like we're going to have some time. Um, what about an eight person quarter? What about this eight person court? What if it was just already been helpful? Well, what I'm saying is what if the, a portion of courts already been helpful? I think how something is court would have accepted stored in the Nebraska case and the only channel case they rejected it based on not having him there push it and they knew he wasn't there and none of them wanted to pick this fight because they are slightly political.

Speaker 5: Even though they don't like to say that they are slightly political because life is political and you're in DC. What if you were standing there today with this eight person court, how do you think your same case would be different or would it in 2016 dispensary dispensing case may not be a lot different because it involved drug laws that were very clear and I was in violation of them under the laws that they allowed us to use what now? Eight, eight, eight, zero was what my court case was like. I could've split it off maybe two to three votes given the current environment that we've moved a couple of the justices forward that were actually in law school potentially when I was in court and you got to look at my case as a pivotal discussion because everybody talked about the pod case pending. I mean as those popular case of the year, even though it didn't come out the way we wanted.

Speaker 5: So I believe we educated a lot of the judicial system with that, but because it was a dispensing case, you ask about rage, patient case grown her own home, homegrown, no sales. That could have come down different because it was a three slash six split. That could have been a victory because that is how pivotal the current makeup of the court has. Given that Obama's picture in there, we have one more pending that could balance that out. But I also believe that you then vet out those that are within the system that we're the holdouts under Scalia and they're no longer leaders and they're not following his lead and they're very vacillating towards, well this may be the best step for society. Let's not throw the book at him. But under Scalia, that book was right there on the table and they had to accept it.

Speaker 5: And I think that's what I like about times changing about some of the beat era folks that are not the beats, but we're holding out that the beads would go away, have since gone away. And I hate to say that we have to change out a whole era, but that's kind of what's happened in our policy makers that have been more accepting. I mean we get a newer folks that want to discuss liberalizing the cannabis regulation laws and there are mostly a lot younger and if they're not, they're very conservative the way that they're interpreting what they want to do with it because there are still afraid of it. They're believing the old logic that when I had to train at the Oakland Police Department with our General Council once a sensitivity class around cannabis cultivation because their rating patient gardens for simple grows and we didn't want to spend the money on it in the city was just like, good deal with it.

Speaker 5: Jeff. We're not dealing with this. We want to get this fixed up. And the cadets were not getting clear discussion because one or two of the narcotics agents that were the trainers were holding out saying there we were just going to go away. That this was gonna all get rolled up into one supreme court ruling at the state or at the federal level. And this would just get swept under the rug and we'd be gone. There you go. And that's why when you come back to the supreme court, it's important that we look at the logic of what we're doing with our presidential pick to make sure that we move it forward.

Speaker 6: I continue to push you away from the presidential discussion for one more, for a couple more moments because I want you to overlay a Murcia for us here and tell us your thoughts.

Speaker 5: The MMRS RSA as we like to say now because mercy is such a bad term in our society of uncurable disease. Oh, uh, but yeah, it's, it's a problem and it's invasive in the sense that it is changing a line of movement and industry that's been in effect for a long time in California, which is the underground cannabis community into something that's above ground. And with that as growing pains with that is flux. Is that a job growth indicator? No, it's more of a job replacement program. You're getting one underground job that's changing into maybe one or less than one above ground job. And that is really what we want to do is right away under the medical regulation act to get all of these underground jobs that were medically incorporated into our system, legalized, as you would say in the in the arena of immigrants because we want to make them legal and the few that they have a right to be legal or laws have always viewed them as being legal.

Speaker 5: We just not have had them identified that way and we've been haphazard at best in California with the regulation patchwork at a local and county level that has not been working for for state law enforcement. They look at us as joke for a local law enforcement. You step over the line, you're dealing with a whole set of different circumstances. The city to the south of us in San Leander had no regulated dispensary and it's just bringing one online with Oakland. Having them sent so far with no problems, right. The city to the north of us. Emeryville, no regulated dispensary. Just started discussing possibly maybe allowing it this last week in the news. So I feel like we're making big roads and if you look at it at a macro picture, a politically the regulation act passing I think is going to warm up cities and towns and counties that were unwilling to take a risk because there was no there, there.

Speaker 5: When you poke at it, you didn't get a clear line of what it meant to the city or the county. Is there an upside or is it a big risk where they get a bunch of cannabis dealers in town and they can't shut them down and it's a big pile of problems that they got to bring the feds in to scrape up the map. Right? Because when everything got to be too messy, they would call defensive sheriff would just say, come clean it up. I can't deal with this. And then they replace security at all being hauled away, like with the rate here in Oakland, which I don't believe was called on by our local officials, but more potentially by or local tax people that felt that he was doing something that wasn't right.

Speaker 6: Right. And we are here at Oaksterdam and, uh, there's gonna be a, maybe some noise in a setting up for a class a little bit later on. So I just want to make folks aware if there are cliques and dragging things. You talk about the raid, the dispensary raid. Um, let's talk about the Oaksterdam university rate because we did just speak to Steve de Angelo were the first scene in the, you know, uh, uh, in his book, uh, is your raid and um, you know, gunplay elsewhere not being dealt with and a, a merger or getting away. I

Speaker 5: just didn't think it speaks to the level of law enforcement priority that's in our country and what we need to do with it and that we really need to think outside of the box with solutions. And when Oaksterdam was rated in April of 2012, you could say for a lot of our community was the sky falling that we couldn't believe it was happening. That Richard was being targeted in a way that we could see no less than two indicative. That it wasn't meaningful, that it would turn out to be a circus trial at best if it moved forward because of both ending in a wheelchair and visually his case would be hard to prove that he was a money grubber because he drove a car that it was six years old. He lived in a small apartment off the lake. He didn't own anything. He gave his money away and most of it he put into prop 19.

Speaker 5: So what they were going to prove was what everybody already knew and it was kind of pathetic in a way. This was no retaliation towards having him lose because we knew he was going to get rated after he lost in 2010. We prepared for it. We were huddled around many a month going south, no indictments and taunting each other because we felt like something was going to happen anytime it's around the corner and what made the shoe drop. Finally, what made them have the decision on that day pivotally to do it. It was bad math for them because the shooting that happened at a school that was in engaged in teaching medical professionals. How to be nurses with somebody that just went on a rampage and went postal in a sense, a very hard time to being convicted in court because was the defensive spent throwing up, uh, with the cops been able to stop it?

Speaker 5: No. Would we have felt safer because the raid wasn't happening in their focal point would have been different? Yeah, because we had an op ed that were in the streets in Oakland acting as security guards to the federal agents. Even though our police department wasn't engaged in the rate they were called out the morning of, to actually engage in security to protect the officers that were at hand from the crowds because we had no less than three to 400 people in the street screaming at the police. I myself almost likely got arrested that day and was held back by my own union representative from making a fool out of myself because it was heated argument. I got mad at an OPA, a standing in my way and I said, dude, you're just acting a security. How do you feel like being a chump? And I just started screaming at him and he got really mad at me and he kind of pushed me and I leaned into him and he said, what are you doing? And My, my union rep pulled me away and said, he's doing nothing. Here is absolutely nothing.

Speaker 5: What? Thank you for taking us through that. And what we, who I see before me seems to be, I'm a laid back guy that wouldn't raise a fist. And we just went through to specific, uh, stories I've not ever got into fisticuffs was an officer. I totally understood court person involved in it in a case. But I have been, uh, convicted jury tamper. How, how did that happen? Balding a medical patient that was a friend of mine running a dispensary collective grow up in Davis that was pulled into a federal court case of a conspiracy because he written down some notes saying that he could grow enough medicine to be self sufficient in a year. And they used that as a conspiracy case against him to do a 10 year mandatory minimum. And I showed up the day of his first trial date, got some paperwork, I guess from somebody at the Court House that was a narrative of his story and started passing it out to anybody even take it.

Speaker 5: Little did I know I passed it out to the US attorney charging the case for us marshals involved in the case, 40 of the 44 jurors that were pulled into the case and they didn't find that very happily funny now and they took it rather seriously. So a dea agent came out and arrested me and pulled me back in and did the perp walk in front of all the Isa protesters that day. And they were all super worried if Jessica, Jessica getting arrested, am I going to get arrested? But they didn't know what I did because I was there first in the morning and nobody else was really there at eight. They all showed up at about 9:00 and by 9:00 I'm pretty much already gotten myself in trouble that day. Right. And so that ended in a whole different catastrophe. But I had never been quiet, but I'm not physically violent.

Speaker 5: I felt like I looked at this as a war, but I picked up a pencil, a piece of paper, a microphone or a TV camera. If they've put it on me and I went to town and I used the logic that they're either going to shut me up, arrest me, and let me go into jail and start talking about this and do worse because I'm going to teach all these people that don't need to know this stuff right away. They can outgrow the government and that's what's going to happen. Don't let him in there and they chose to keep me outside and I chose to try to ride the line of being not violent, not too aggressive, but enough of a challenge that they saw me not backing down and I knew back then that I was on the right side of this. That there wasn't some big lie that I was staying in front of.

Speaker 5: It was going to come out and Congress to say that we lie, that marijuana is addictive in a way that we've not been reporting it to be like tobacco companies have. But I didn't understand how big it was going to be and how much of a sea change of logic that it was going to be and that we would have commentators that were medical professionals being our biggest spokesperson overnight without a lot of lobbying because we didn't lobby some of these people that have had their own epiphany is about, this is not a wonder drug, but it is definitely something that is not defined correctly. Right. So

Speaker 6: here we are. And how would you describe your emotional makeup now? Because you seem. I have called a lot in my old age. Yeah. Because I still got there

Speaker 5: trouble in my early twenties, got sued by the Federal Government when I was 23, uh, dealt with a real ongoing court case for two or three years that caused me to get a lot of gray hair. But back then I had an epiphany. I felt like by the time that I looked like Einstein with puffy, white hair kind of professor, like cannabis would be legal. He'd be able to buy it in a place that made you feel like you were not a criminal. And that it was almost no different than a Barfield. You walk in, you get credential, you get the room and that it's going on in. You can do what you do and then you're fine. And when I turned 40, I happened to be in Colorado for the one of the cannabis business conferences in Denver and does it one of the adult shops for the first time on a tour and gave my id and they swiped it and I just turned 40 that week and if we didn't celebrate my birthday and it was just this weird quickness and I went, that's not me.

Speaker 5: It says it's 40 and I'm standing in a cannabis shop for the first time buying legal marijuana at 40. And I kinda had a Deja Vu movement that back in my twenties. I felt in about 20 years, about 40 I'll be able to walk into a place and these treated not just as a patient that needs it medically and has to get credentialed by having, as Dr [inaudible] wrote in his note, taken a copy of. But it's just somebody that's walking in off the street buying and common commodity and I feel like we've come a long ways, even though it's been slow baby steps, little teeny steps, no big lurch, which would have been my court case winning or it would've been a huge flirt that unhinged the controlled substance act in a way that would have been maybe uncomfortable for most government type.

Speaker 6: Well, I think uncomfortable that would've changed the whole thing. You know, they're still using that.

Speaker 5: I think that the system itself didn't let it happen as I believe we have to make things that have equitable balance on both sides for it to survive system check.

Speaker 6: Totally. But it just getting back to your point that the coal memos are based on the controlled Substances Act. So let me give you some history. Yeah, US attorney cold.

Speaker 5: Yes. Worked on my court case when he filed that memo. I went back and flip through my docket and on the pleadings, you don't understand how many pleadings have Kohl's name on the front of them as part of the US attorney's office in DC. That reviewed, filed and had to respond to all of my legal briefs, so I educated Cole. He's a friend of mine, even though he doesn't know me, he knows Jeff Jones, he knows ocbc like it or not. We affected him and we affected how that Cole memo got issued because we made him see the logic in the nineties that then bubbled up in 2008 and stuck to the wall. Right in a way that was meaningful for everybody for the current term and I take credit for that. When that happened, we were alive in an Oh, you class and I stopped the class.

Speaker 5: We played the little clipping on a youtube that had just gotten released or it might even been on my slingbox on my home use network because it wasn't even on the web yet. And I said, we're living through history. This is the biggest thing today that has ever happened in marijuana reform or not. And let me tell you, I've been waiting for this pinch me because I think I'm going to drink and everybody giggled you, you. So 2009 just to kind of set it a Ogden memo in 2009, 2011, his first Cole memo and then we walked backwards. I'm sorry it was Ogden educated, cold. Might've been on one or two of my. It was David Ogden, right. Was colorfully aligned with a lot of the memos because most of my briefing came out of DC. It was not being paper pushed out of the San Francisco office where my court case was being dealt with but directly out of DC and I thought I felt for most of my early years I had an entourage of a very important group of people following me.

Speaker 5: Not necessarily day to day and entailed, but people were watching me. I was being monitored by people that were a lot more important than I was and it kind of made me feel important that I'd have an FBI agent maybe assigned to me that I had to check in with me once a month or dea agent that had to know what I was doing because I was using their time and I felt like if we all did this, if we all use the system, it was going to break. Right, and that's kind of my logic at the time because there was no book seth that said, this is how we're going to change the law. There was no collection of memos to say, this is what we're going to do to go ring the bell and make the bell swing backwards and cannabis is free again. We just had to keep at it and nowadays you have more of a track to run on.

Speaker 5: You have certain things with the definite tractor running you can do and things are going to get better. I'm just looking at Florida, for instance, that's putting medical back on the ballot and is likely going to change the rule set there because they've already changed the CBD law. They've already gotten the governor signed in the new law that liberalize that to more medical availability of adult like cannabis that's got a higher potency. Those are little victories and that's where we win locally. We don't win so much on the federal level, although we could. What does, uh, what does that mean, Jeff Johns, when, when you start, when you pause and say we could. We're in the cusp of the 2016 presidential election cycle. I've never had a presidential election candidate ever talk about my issue in a way that made me feel good. Now let's do it.

Speaker 5: And, uh, since Bernie Sanders had been discussing this issue in an open way in the early part of the campaign, I out myself as a slight burn supporter. I've given him a small amount of money under 100 bucks just to kind of tease him and get on his email list and see what he's saying. And nothing that he says has been negative to what I view as important policies moving forward, bringing the light into some of the corruption of our government and making it more workable and more people friendly. And part of that is changing the war on drugs, especially the cannabis war. And he's the only one out of the electives that I've seen talk about using the scheduling as a discussion point, which is more important to me than reschedule it. Well, it's not in this at our school. May I please? Yeah. Let's actually just for a second.

Speaker 5: Dea Scheduling, is that more important than rescheduling? It's necessary versus rescheduling is, am I to other d schedule and wait six months then rescheduled now and have the setback five to 10 years of GE scheduling because rescheduling puts it into the pharmacist hands. If it's scheduled two or three reduced scheduling, it puts it into the play of adult consumables like alcohol or tobacco. Still widely regulated, heavily taxed, accounted for, controlled in their chain of distribution, but not so unwieldy as to treat it like plutonium and I get back to how do we need to treat it, what future are we setting up for themselves and where does our industry help our farmers in California, on the west coast or another pockets of the country make the most out of their land and that's when we start domestically being able to supply the country with the cannabis that should be consumed.

Speaker 5: That's US growth. We have to change the schedule and the quickest way to make it commodity is to downscale it. There's only one person that's put his money where his mouth is and that's time introducing the bill for the first time to down schedule it instead of rescheduling it triggered the discussion that came out of Hillary's camp saying that they just wanted to reschedule to schedule to, well, that's a current bill. That's old news. That's not breaking news. I mean, we know that that's the given and I'm not stopping there, and I liked how Berni responded to that by saying, oh, that's not enough. No, that's simply just not enough and that's what I want out of my federal elected is a little bit of credit, a little bit of courage to go to the next level, that sound that's not founded in its judgment of making a good step and I think he's willing to use some of these convictions, some of his value set on us in a way that I didn't know other politician federally is done. I mean, given that I've been sued by a federal administration politically in mind because the date that I triggered, that lawsuit happened to be the day through the wind ski gate broke on. Matt drove, so I was not in the news that day because Clinton overwhelmed everything locally that was going on and I came home to watch the news that night and get a little press conference here and there. Nothing. It was all claiming, hugging this, this young intern that I knew nothing about. Right.

Speaker 5: What? What if that hadn't happened that day, do you? How do you think that would've changed? Things wouldn't have changed anything out. Fair enough. Court case, but it have changed the pr that we were very early on starting to battle. We actually hired a PR firm that we paid up to $20,000 a month during some of the heaviest months of our tenor during that 98 year because we wanted to win in the in the public opinion poll. That's where we knew we could win, we could win and educate minds and change people forever. We didn't think we'd have a good outcome and court. We didn't think they would be fair. We didn't think that we would end in a way that will be positive and when we did we do. Somebody would pull over somebody with something in their car and it would all go bad and we were not have a fair outcome. They would use our own inabilities against us, which is the inability to stay away from cannabis in California.

Speaker 5: This is the way it is. Yeah, and we were constantly around it and even though I said that I was not engaged in activity, if they wanted to tap my phone and caused me to get into the deep prob, I probably in some way could have been entrapped because I had friends that were involved in it. I literally had people that were part of my board split off from me and go and start other groups. That's part of how Berkeley patients group was formed, was a former board member, reminds you can't do it. I've got HIV. Heck, I'm going down the street and he literally did and the rest is history and that agency has not been stopped because it operates in a way that the local government is very in tune with and I think that's what the model that's been created out of our industries that you can do this right in a way that's meaningful and has lasting sticking power.

Speaker 5: And that's what makes me have hope about the federal elections is even if Bernie's not successful, he's interjected into the discussion something that was so worthwhile that was overdue and you might not have it right now in some of the political discourse is there in New York and things are getting a little choppy, but some common courtesy and some non combativeness that we've had as a given under the republican side of things. If it is failure, success through failure. Once again. Uh, so thank you for everything that you've done. We have three more questions. They are the final questions. We've got to do them quick. I know. Uh, I'll tell you what they are and then I'll ask you them, what has most surprised you in cannabis? What has most surprised you in life? And on the soundtrack of Jeff Jones, his life. What is one track?

Speaker 5: One song that must be on their first questions first, what has most surprised you in cannabis? How fast the last couple of years it started moving. Um, when I first got involved with this, I put my head down and said maybe five years. Can go by, when I got sued, one of my attorneys said it would be a decade before the legal system caught up with where you're at. He's truthful about that. Yeah. Just to be 20 years. Right. He was just a decade off. What about, uh, what has most surprised you in life? Being married. Finding my wife because I never took myself with being married and having two kids and that is definitely surprised me. It's not scary. Surprises just kind of delightful. Right? That my back in my twenties, I never would have taken the risk to have kids because I was on that line. I was ready to get shot.

Speaker 5: I didn't have a problem getting shot. It's like, oh, I'm going to get shot today. Okay. I hope you don't get shot in the heart. Right. That's it. Yeah. Well it'd be quicker. Yeah. But I mean it's like I want it to survive. I wasn't going in as a kamikaze, so I think marriage is the biggest thing that surprised me. And Dale Sky not, not too bad. Right. Not too bad of a partner. That's the only person I think I would have been married to. Right. And you work together. Well, that's lucky. I just, I couldn't pick that on the soundtrack of Jeff Jones, his life one track one song that's got to be on there. Oh Gosh. It would vacillate a little on that because I like so many songs. That's fine. The music head. Okay. Got It. Melting pot of something from one of the early cars soundtrack.

Speaker 5: Really to maybe something like my best friend's girl is that cars to that. I mean there's a few good ones and I've been vacillating off cars to maybe a guy. There's a few. There were jade me because I'm kind of in the classic rock. That's fine. Um, I don't know if I can pin one down. That's hard. Okay, that's fair. I don't love it. We had the cars there. We had, you know, something there. I know that we talked about, uh, uh, you and Etienne had to go through the times when I, when I got in trouble and got arrested the day for jury tampering, I listened to a Dave Matthews soundtrack and I really got on the agenda, just did it one because I did it right and I was admitting it and I was going to go to court and say I did it and then attorneys can't say that you're going to get convicted, you're going to go to court now, but I was ready to go in and say I did it. And inevitably they had me on videotape during the whole thing, so I couldn't even hide it was like, so we'll take that answer. You were on the tour a, Dave Matthews. We just saw a show in sf a Wednesday. There you go. Jeff Jones, thank you for the past, uh, what, 25, 30 years as well as the past hour. Yeah. Uh, it has been a wonderful, very wonderful experience and I wouldn't change it for the world and neither would we. Thank you so much. Thank you. And there you have Jeff Jones,

Speaker 1: I mean, you know, there just isn't an industry without guys like that, you know, recent folks that we've had on them will have on, you know, in the bay area, Steve de Angelo at 10 Fontanne. Without these guys, there is no industry. So thanks to them for their history and their reality. And thank you for listening.

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